There are many aspects of my upbringing, education, and experience that define the work that I do first as an actor and now more importantly as a playwright. The most obvious facets are the fact that I am an immigrant, that my family came from (and in many ways still lives in) poverty, and that theater saved my life which may be the reason that I have dedicated my life to this art form. When I was about eight years old, I came to New York City from the Dominican Republic to live with my mother. I came to this country not even knowing that such a place existed, without knowing the language, or a single thing about the culture. To learn English, I read books like Matilda, The Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Pippi Longstocking, Goosebumps, and more. I also started watching The A-Team, Knight Rider, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and all the Saturday morning cartoons. It was from these books, tv, and movies that I came to learn how to speak the language and I also developed a love for storytelling.

I grew up in a home with a single mother who did not speak English. She was a very hard worker and I have inherited her work ethic. She went out of her way to take great care of me, despite not knowing the language, working minimum wage jobs. She was my sole provider and caretaker. She was stoic, resolute, and filled with a great agency. She would fight with drug dealers, the landlord, and the Department of Education alike. The absence of women like my mother in the plays, television, and movies that I was watching made me realize that I wanted to bring characters that reminded me of her to the stage and screen.

As I continued to watch television and started going to the theater I also noticed that I rarely heard people that sounded like members of my community. Growing up in New York City, specifically in Harlem and Washington Heights, I got to listen to hip-hop, and Spanish music which trained my ears to pay close attention to lyrics, rhythm, and language. Due to the city’s international population, I was also exposed to many different types of languages, ethnicities, and cultures. The home of Broadway and off-Broadway, Wall Street, and the black market — extreme affluence and poverty intersect here. In many ways, my perspective, my level of empathy, and my work have been deeply influenced by all of these things.

I like to test the boundaries of the structures, and forms we use to create theatre. The work that I am interested in writing and developing explores the complexities of human constructs like race, culture, and gender and how they affect our daily interactions and relationships. I also like to explore stories of women and people of the global majority who have been largely ignored by history. Since history is written by the victor what happens to the stories (to the culture) of those who lost the war? I think there’s enough space for all stories to exist and to be in conversation with each another. Representation matters, if you don’t see yourself reflected in history then it will quite difficult for you to imagine what your future could be.

The piece that I’m currently working on is The Commission, a multimedia play about Boo, who is sick of watching BIPOC getting murdered by the police and disproportionately dying due to a pandemic, all the while trying to thrive in under-served communities. She wants to do something about it and believes that she’s found just the thing. She plans to create New York City’s first-ever racial justice and reconciliation commission. She has time now that she’s graduated school and no matter how hard she tries can’t seem to find a job. She recruits her man, Ace, to lead the first meeting of the commission.